Aug 8, 2008

Who's got the biggest scoreboard? The Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys will have the largest video scoreboard of any sports facility when their new stadium opens in 2009. The scoreboard, pictured above, features two "sideline displays" measuring 159 feet x 71 feet, and two "endzone displays" measuring 50 feet by 28 feet. There will be also more than 3,600 linear feet of ribbon board LED displays. Mitsubishi is supplying the LED screens, and recently revealed these specs:

Sportline.com attempts to give an idea of how massive this scoreboard will be: "Imagine four city buses parked in a line. Now imagine another layer of buses stacked on top of them. Add five more layers and hang the 28-bus cluster over a mental football field."

Sportsline also reports that the cost of the massive screens will be more than $35 million, the amount that the original stadium in Dallas cost to build in 1971.

Meanwhile, at least one fan is worried the huge size of the scoreboard might hurt the fan experience. From DallasNews.com:

Team officials say [the 60-yard video scoreboard] will give every fan a close-up view of the action, and that's what worries a reader named Diane.

She's concerned that it'll create problems for fans when the on-field action and the on-screen action are going in opposite directions. In other words, it could be a huge distraction trying to watch a 50-foot-tall Terrell Owens streak toward the end zone one way when the life-size T.O. on the field is heading the other way.

"It has never been an issue before because the screens have never been 60 yards wide!" Diane wrote in an e-mail. "It would be impossible as a fan sitting on the Cowboys side to ignore that huge screen, which is of course Jerry Jones' intent."

Cowboys officials said they considered that, but they wouldn't be able to show the action from different perspectives on each side of the stadium.

Team spokesman Brett Daniels said he's not aware of any technology that could reverse the image on the fly for one side of the screen. Diane wrote that she wished the Cowboys would consider hiring a second video crew to shoot separate footage for the other side of the scoreboard.